Eric Hoffer Quotes

"Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world."

"Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature."

"In the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything"

"Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something."

"They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor."

"Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of"

"No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are."

"Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart."

"The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future."

"The superficiality of the American is the result of his hustling. It needs leisure to think things out; it needs leisure to mature. People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility."

"It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it."

"Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world."

"To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes -- we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world."

"The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together."

"We do not really feel grateful toward those who make our dreams come true; they ruin our dreams"

"With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves."

"The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself."

"The pre-human creature from which man evolved was unlike any other living thing in its malicious viciousness toward its own kind. Humanization was not a leap forward but a groping toward survival."

"It is not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words"

"Creativity is discontent translated into arts"